Home for Christmas
by Iniga
Summary: Hodgins and Angela face the holiday season after the events of the Doom in the Boom. More or less for the Bonesology 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. All done; Day 12 is complete. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing.
1. Mistletoe

A Holiday Challenge

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Note** : _There's a reason that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. Actually, there are many reasons that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. But after the way the mid-season break left poor Hodgins and Angela, I felt compelled to write the Bonesology 12 Days of Christmas Challenge for them instead of for the stars. I'm not positive that I'm in compliance with the rule about no continuing stories, however. My first two ficlets, while functionally stand-alones, are definitely slipping into the same universe in the aftermath of the same episode. If I've broken a rule, I apologize and want to emphasize that no offense is intended._

 _So here goes…_

 _Ficlet is set after The Doom in the Boom (Season 11). Spoilers for anything before that; no canon compliance for anything after._

 **Day 1: Mistletoe**

The mistletoe turned out to be a better idea than Angela had expected it to be when she offered the general manager of the rehabilitation center a flirty smile and a small bribe to convince him to let her use it as a decoration.

She had hung it above Hodgins' bed the moment he'd been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility. She hadn't needed it as an excuse to kiss him as many times as she could during her daily visits. But she had hoped that it would remind Hodgins that she was always thinking of him even when she couldn't be by his side.

Hodgins had been uncharacteristically quiet since the doctors had told him that he was paralyzed from the waist down. There hadn't been a word of complaint, and she'd found herself _wishing_ that he would complain. She wished that he would scream or cry or wallow in darkly sarcastic commentary about the unfairness of the world. Past experience had led her to expect as much from her naturally demonstrative husband. Past experience was currently worthless.

At the lab at the Jeffersonian, they could catch a killer with very little: a single bone, a few drops of blood, a chip of paint, or (her husband's favorite) a swarm of maggots. They couldn't catch a killer with nothing.

Hodgins was giving her the emotional equivalent of nothing, and that left her at a loss as to what to say to help him.

She'd said the obvious things, of course, and she'd said them over and over.

 _I love you. You know that. We're in this together and you're going to have everything you need. This sucks, I'm not going to lie about that, but it won't always feel this bad. I promise. You still have a wife who is so happy to be married to you. You still have a son who thinks you can do anything. You still have a career that fulfills you and challenges you. You still have friends who couldn't love you any more if you were their own flesh and blood._

 _Remember the time they locked us in the lab for that weird JFK thing? You told me you loved me. You told me you would help me however you can, that we could move in together, that we could get married. You told me you were my guy. You were right. You were always my guy. You will always be my guy. And I'm your girl, and I will help you however I can._

And he rasped out a "thank you" or an "I love you" in a flat, tired voice.

She never failed to remind him that she particularly loved his voice. _Like hot tea and honey_ , she told him, and not for the first time.

She grasped his hand and asked if he felt their lives vibrating together the way he'd said that he could the day she'd given birth to Michael Vincent.

She promised him that she would stay with him all night, that he could feel safe going to sleep because she would be there when he woke up. She remembered when that promise had been enough to comfort him because his nightmares hadn't been real.

He told her to go home and get some rest in her own bed and see to their son.

She refused, and told him that Michael Vincent was just fine with Booth and Brennan, who owed them about a year's worth of babysitting after all the times they'd taken Christine and Hank.

The hospital had been good about ignoring little things like "visiting hours" and letting Angela spend most of her waking moments and some of her sleeping ones by her husband's side.

The rehabilitation facility afforded her no such flexibility. Visiting hours were strictly enforced.

Hence the mistletoe, along with the photographs and other mementos of home that she'd set on the windowsill not far from Hodgins' bed.

If all the mistletoe had done was prompt Hodgins' look of mild amusement when she purported to be shocked each time she saw it, it would have been worth the effort.

If all the mistletoe had done was give Brennan and Cam and Hodgins' other female visitors an excuse to kiss his cheek each time they visited without seeming overly pitying, it would have been worth the effort.

If all the mistletoe had done was get the nurses and physical therapists into the habit of blowing kisses to Hodgins and thinking of him as one of their particular favorite patients, it would have been worth the effort.

But the mistletoe, magic plant that it was, went her one better.

Soon after Hodgins began his rehabilitation in earnest, Wendell Bray asked if he could accompany Angela on her daily trek from the lab to the rehab facility. Angela wondered for a moment if she ought to tell Wendell no. Wendell and Hodgins had always been friends, and her brief romantic entanglement with Wendell had been over for years, but under the circumstances Hodgins might not want to be confronted with a man who had been the subject of one of her nude paintings. Hodgins had, after all, openly told Wendell that he had once planned his murder in great detail.

Then Angela determined that if Hodgins had a problem with Wendell, Hodgins could damn well express it- along with anything else he might be feeling. And so she told Wendell that she would be happy to have him join her for visiting hours, and that Hodgins could never have too many well-wishers.

"Look," she said, feigning surprise as they entered Hodgins' room. "Mistletoe." She kissed her husband warmly on the lips and felt his perfunctory return of the kiss.

Wendell grinned sharkily as he loped around to the other side of Hodgins' bed and gave Hodgins a kiss on the forehead.

"Knock it off!" Hodgins objected with an undertone of annoyance- and a genuine startled laugh. Angela didn't think she'd heard Hodgins laugh since before the accident.

"Sorry," said Wendell, not sounding sorry at all. "Not risking the bad luck."

"That only applies to women," said Hodgins. "Get your stupid superstitions straight."

"What if it affects Angela because she's the only woman in the vicinity?" asked Wendell. "We can't risk that."

"You're making a stupid myth even stupider. I'm impressed," said Hodgins.

Wendell bowed in response, and the rest of the conversation was the most pleasant one she had seen any of Hodgins' friends manage. Even Booth and Brennan had been subjected to variations on the near-silent treatment Angela herself had gotten.

When Wendell stood up to leave halfway through visiting hours, he moved as if he might kiss Hodgins again, and Hodgins slapped him away before they wished each other well and Wendell promised to return soon.

"Stupid," Hodgins whispered when Wendell was gone. "So stupid."

"He made you laugh, and it's good to hear you laugh," said Angela. "Further proof that Brennan only hires geniuses to be her interns. Even if Wendell is supposed to be the normal one," she added, invoking Booth's usual descriptor for Wendell.

That was when she noticed that her husband was fighting to hold back tears.

"Was I wrong to let him come? Jack?" she asked frantically. "You don't have to see him again if it upsets you. I won't see him again if it upsets you. I'll walk out of the lab when he walks in." It was the kind of ridiculous offer she would never have expected to make before she'd nearly lost her husband and been beyond desperate to bring him back.

"No way, Angie. I'd never ask you to do that." Despite the wobble in his voice, he sounded more like himself than he had since before he'd collapsed and been rushed to the hospital unable to move his legs.

"You don't have to. You don't have to ask me for anything that you want right now." She considered that. "Okay, I lied. You have to ask me because I'm completely stumped trying to figure out what you need. You have to ask me, but you don't have to worry about whether I'll do it, because I'll do anything." He seemed to be hardening into his usual emotionless mask, and she carefully pulled out the word he had used so many times. "Even if it's _stupid_ , I'll do it."

She'd guessed correctly. Tears shone in his eyes again.

"I've been stupid enough these past two weeks to last us both a lifetime," he said. "I don't need any help with that."

She cut her eyes quickly to the door to make certain that there weren't any lurking nurses who might shoo her away before climbing onto his bed and leaning gently against him. They hadn't been so physically close since before his hospitalization and it felt wonderful despite the circumstances.

"What on earth have you done that was stupid?" she asked, cupping his cheek with one hand. He leaned into her touch, and the small vulnerable gesture made her want to cry, too.

"How many years have we spent dealing with murder day in and day out?" he asked rhetorically.

She answered anyway because it was such a relief to have a real conversation with him. "Ten? Twelve?"

"How many of our victims were killed by bombs?"

She shrugged. She really had no idea, although several particularly gory incidents popped into her head. Her first bombing, when Brennan had asked her to hold an evidence bag and she hadn't been able to do it, came to mind first. Then there had been the Christmas that the poor man dressed as Santa Claus had been forced to blow himself up…

"Enough, right?" Hodgins answered for her. "We've been up close and personal with bombs."

"Sure," she agreed as neutrally as she could.

"I picked up that phone," said Hodgins with real loathing in his voice. "I pulled it off the body and held it in my hand and said something about how weird it was that the phone was connected to a wire. Aubrey knew as soon as I picked it up. Aubrey had time to throw himself over me."

"That's Aubrey's job. You were there to look at bugs and dirt and… things that aren't bombs. Aubrey is supposed to look at everything else so he can protect you and you can be completely focused on the maggots. That's why they started calling us squints over at the FBI. They handle the violence, we squint at stuff."

"I still know better, Angie! I should have. But I didn't, and I almost got both myself and Aubrey killed! And that wasn't enough. I took aspirin. Out of all the painkillers in the world, I took aspirin. Everyone knows that you don't take aspirin where there might be bleeding, but I was pouring it into my mouth right out of the bottle. I don't even know how much I took, but once that hematoma bumped my spinal cord… You may never never have the man you agreed to marry again."

He clapped his hand over her mouth to keep her from protesting that she had exactly the man she'd agreed to marry regardless of whether he ever walked or fathered a child again.

"My brain was the one thing I knew I brought with me to any relationship. Any job. Anything I wanted to do. Even if everyone hated me and thought I needed anger management. Even if I lost my money. Even if… I know I can be a jerk, Angela, but I never thought I was stupid."

"You aren't," she mumbled against his hand.

"And mostly I'm going to pay, but so are you and so is our son."

She kissed his hand before removing it from her mouth and kissing his lips, too. The kiss must have told him something that her words had not, because this time the kiss she got in return was desperate and pleading instead of detached and mechanical.

"Still my guy," she murmured when they broke apart. "Still my guy, who will be putting his brilliant brain to work on getting well enough to come home even if it's in a wheelchair."

"Yeah?" he asked, as if she hadn't said the words a thousand times in the last week. Not that it mattered. She'd be happy to say them a thousand more.

"Yeah," she said, using her fingers to brush away the tears that had fallen down his cheeks. His heart was back on his sleeve where it belonged.

She could work with this.

They could do this.

When one of the nurses came in to tell Angela that it was time to go and scold her for being on the bed, she was so flustered to be snapped out of the comforting daze into which she had slipped that she forgot to give Hodgins a final kiss goodbye.

She blew him a kiss from the door instead, and saw his eyes flicker above his bed to the mistletoe as she left.

The mistletoe would still be there tomorrow, and tomorrow would be better.

 **The End**


	2. Hot Chocolate

A Holiday Challenge

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Note** : _There's a reason that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. Actually, there are many reasons that Booth and Brennan are the franchise. But after the way the mid-season break left poor Hodgins and Angela, I felt compelled to write the Bonesology 12 Days of Christmas Challenge for them instead of for the stars. I'm not positive that I'm in compliance with the rule about no continuing stories, however. My first two ficlets, while functionally stand-alones, are definitely slipping into the same universe in the aftermath of the same episode. If I've broken a rule, I apologize and want to emphasize that no offense is intended._

 _Ficlet is set a few weeks after The Doom in the Boom (Season 11). Spoilers for anything before that; no canon compliance for anything after._

 **Day 2: Hot Chocolate**

Hodgins glanced at the clock. Visiting hours had begun fifteen minutes before, but he was alone in his room at the rehab facility. For once.

It wasn't that he thought that his wife or his son or his friends ought to manage to come to him every single day during visiting hours. He was a grown man, after all, and there was no need for them to disrupt their lives constantly when he was perfectly capable of going about the business of healing all on his own.

But the fact remained that he was never alone during visiting hours. Someone always burst through the door the first moment that permission was granted, and someone always needed to be expelled when visiting hours were over. If Angela was prevented from coming by work or by Michael Vincent's needs, one of their colleagues always arrived in her stead. Hodgins was fairly certain that they'd developed some sort of schedule, but they all demurred when he tried to ask them.

All he could do was be grateful.

There was nothing like getting blown up and paralyzed to remind a person of how much he had to lose, and how much he had to appreciate.

He didn't have an extended opportunity to count his blessings, though, because that was when Angela exploded into the room wearing the grin that she always wore when she thought that she was getting away with something.

"What have you done?" he asked by way of greeting.

She kissed him, hard and excited. "What makes you think I did anything?"

"Angie."

She waved her hand dismissively. "The people around here have no sense of whimsy. You know I had to take my bribes all the way to the top to get that mistletoe above your bed, right?"

He laughed, amused and wishing he could have seen it. "No, I didn't know that that was contraband mistletoe."

"And that's not the only contraband in this room right now." She beamed and deposited her overly large purse on his bed. "Look inside."

Eagerly, he opened the bag. Anything that made Angela this happy made him happy, too.

The only thing out of the ordinary was a thermos, which he removed and held up with a questioning look on his face.

"Hot chocolate," said Angela primly. "It might be the warmest December on record, but we that doesn't mean we shouldn't have hot chocolate. It wouldn't be right."

"Okay," he said slowly. "There can't possibly be a rule against you bringing hot chocolate to your husband. I don't have any dietary restrictions."

"And I double checked with Cam to make sure that this was okay," Angela assured him. "And I asked Brennan, not that she's a medical doctor, but you know. Brennan. We Googled the shit out of it just in case."

Suspicious now, Hodgins opened the thermos and smelled the contents.

Then tasted them, for final confirmation of his suspicions.

"Angie," he whispered. "There are signs every five feet around here that this is a no-alcohol facility. It's full of politicians who crashed their cars driving drunk."

"But you aren't a politician, you didn't crash your car, and you certainly weren't driving drunk." Her smile somehow got even wider. "Jack Stanley Hodgins, when I married you I vowed that our life together would be fun. There is no reason that that has to stop just because you're temporarily stuck in here. You don't have any more therapy sessions today, do you?"

"No."

"I didn't think they'd make their star student do extra work after visiting hours," she mused.

He rolled his eyes. He was able to have a good attitude about the situation because whatever else he had lost, he still had Angela and their son. But his triumphs that week had been confirmation that he had control over his own bladder and an unusually quick progression through the wheelchair training course. His upper body strength was excellent, the product of a lifetime spent burning off excess energy by dropping to the lab floor to do pushups, and so he was able to swing himself into and out of the chair without much effort. The therapists had been so impressed that he'd floated the idea of going home in time for Christmas, and the therapists had wasted no time in crushing his hopes. _Soon_ , they promised. _But not that soon._

"Don't roll your eyes," said Angela. "We're going to celebrate with a toast." She grabbed the thermos and raised it in his direction. "To the king of the wheelchair obstacle course. Who knew that those arms were good for more than just eye candy?" She took a long drink and returned the thermos to him, gesturing that he should do the same.

The alcohol burned its way down his throat, all the more pleasant for being forbidden. "There's hardly any hot chocolate in this hot chocolate," he told her.

"There's _some_ ," she said with mock-offense.

He took another, more careful sip to get a better idea of what he was drinking. "Bailey's," he said. The taste was unmistakeable. "Irish whiskey. And…"

"A whole bottle of Guinness," said Angela smugly. "I do not fool around. Except with you."

He couldn't help but flinch. Angela had already made it abundantly clear that one way or another, their sex life was not over. He had decided to let her have enough faith for both of them on that particular topic for now.

He took another drink, this time toasting Angela. "To the best purveyor of counterfeit hot chocolate in the world."

"I'll drink to that." She did, then raised the thermos for another toast. "And now we have to toast Michael Staccato Vincent Hodgins, who was sent to the principal's office today."

"What?" Suddenly the drinking game didn't seem like so much fun. "You should have led with that, Angie."

"It's not a big deal."

"We can't expect the kid not to act out. He sees his father a couple of times a week, his mother is stressed all the time, he's always getting shunted over to Booth and Brennan's to spend the night-"

"He calls that 'having a sleepover,' not getting shunted. He and Christine are so used to her staying with us when Booth is in some kind of crisis that they both think it's normal."

"He could still be acting out. We should call-"

"His substitute teacher was telling a story about a man who was attacked by boa constrictors in Africa."

"Boa constrictors are native to the Americas," Hodgins objected.

Angela laughed throatily. "And what do you think your son told the teacher?"

"He shouldn't have been sent to the principal for that."

"The teacher asked him to accept it as part of the story. Michael Vincent wanted to know why they couldn't just make the snake a black mamba to improve the story. Turns out that the story was written by the teacher's nephew and the teacher was very sensitive about hearing it fact-checked by a six-year-old." She grinned again. "We got an apology. He got told not to interrupt storytime unless he's called on to speak. I don't think he was traumatized, particularly because Christine has been retelling the story so that you'd think he's a conquering hero."

Hodgins took another long drink. "In that case, I'd like to toast boa constrictors and black mambas."

Angela threw back a drink in her turn.

"And I'd like to toast Christine for knowing a hero when she sees one."

"And I'd like to toast our family. Immediate and extended."

"That's two toasts," said Angela.

"Should've been three," Hodgins decided, warmed by the hot chocolate and soothed by the news that his son was navigating the small challenges life had thrown his way with aplomb. "Immediate, extended, and expanding. One way or another, Angela, we'll have that big family you always wanted."

"I think we will, too," she said. "But no matter what, if I've got you and I've got our son, I'm happy."

She shoved the now-empty thermos back into her bag, ready to leave before someone came by to tell her that visiting hours were nearly over and noticed something amiss.

"I'll be back with you full time as soon as I can," he vowed as they shared a chocolate-flavored kiss goodbye.

"You'd better be."

 _Christmas_ , he decided as he watched her leave. He would be home for Christmas no matter how loudly the physical therapists insisted that that was not a realistic goal after the trauma his body had sustained.

He had a miracle of a family.

Screw realistic. It didn't apply.

 **The End**


	3. Snow

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 3: Snow**

It was the natural order of things that people made small talk about the weather when they didn't have anything else to say to the virtual strangers with whom they happened to share a few moments.

It was one thing when that lasted for ten minutes in a waiting room or ten seconds in an elevator.

It was another when it seemed to be the only topic of conversation, ever, as it currently was in the rehab facility to which Hodgins had been confined since he'd been dumb enough to get himself blown up while investigating a murder.

(Angela told him that none of it was his fault, and he mostly believed her when she said it, but when he had a bad day and felt frustrated his mind stuck on a loop of _how stupid could I have possibly been not to realize that that was a bomb as soon as I saw it? How much worse was it that I took aspirin when I knew I might be bleeding?_ )

He was sick of hearing the inmates and the wardens alike chatter incessantly about how it didn't feel like the Christmas season thanks to the warm temperatures and the lack of snow.

In fact, Hodgins privately determined, it didn't feel like the Christmas season because he was stuck in a rehab facility instead of buying presents and going to parties and taking his son to see Santa. The snow had nothing to do with it.

And it didn't even snow in Washington DC all that often. _Most_ Washington Christmases weren't white. When it did snow so much as half an inch, the city shut down because no one knew how to drive in the stuff. The current heat wave hadn't changed that.

He started to tell an in-patient congressman (there doing rehab after shattering his pelvis in a car accident that resulted from trying to drive while two hookers half his age "distracted" him) that if he was really concerned about the usual weather he could stop publicly denying the science behind climate change. A team of nurses and physical therapists whisked him away to another room to finish his treatment.

They worked him out hard, he assumed as punishment for breaking the unspoken rule that required him to pretend not to recognize the congressman.

When one of them asked about the decade-old scar on his leg, then, he cheerfully told her that his wife's best friend had deliberately filleted him when they'd been stuck in a car together for hours.

None of them seemed to believe that he was answering honestly. He had no idea why they might have drawn that conclusion.

In any case, they worked him out even harder after that. When the session finally ended, he wasn't able to swing his useless legs back into his bed without help. For several days he'd been managing on his own quite consistently, and the setback of feeling his body give out on him didn't do anything for his terrible mood.

He glared at the ceiling when they left him alone in his room.

 _Snow_. The lack of snow was the last thing that anyone needed to worry about.

He hadn't intended to doze off (he always got company during visiting hours and Angela would have things to talk about that weren't the weather), but he soon found himself caught in a dreamy state between sleep and awake.

In his dream, he could walk, of course, and he held Angela's hand.

 _It was snowing._

 _The world around them sparkled silver and white, pure and untouched by murder and mayhem. Angela was even more beautiful than usual, her vibrant energy a stark contrast to the calm whiteness of the sky and the ground and the trees._

 _For a long time, neither of them spoke. It was enough just to be together._

 _Then Angela laughed and tugged at his hand._

" _Let's go sledding," she said. She began to run toward the top of the mountain. He didn't know how they knew that the mountain was there, but as they reached the top and collapsed in a heap beside the bright blue toboggan, Michael Vincent crawled into his arms._

 _Had Michael Vincent been with them all along? He wasn't sure._

" _Let's go!" Michael demanded after letting Hodgins relish a long hug._

 _And suddenly Hodgins knew that he couldn't. "You and your mother can go," he said. "I can't."_

 _His legs didn't work. He had forgotten._

" _You can," said Angela, and she helped him maneuver himself onto the toboggan._

 _She was right. It wasn't as if he needed to walk or stand for this. All he had to do was wrap his arms around his wife and his son, and scream with the thrill of it all as the sled picked up speed…_

 _And crashed._

The pain in his legs where he wasn't supposed to feel pain was intense enough that he moaned out loud and woke himself up.

"All right?"

The first thing he registered was that he had missed the beginning of visiting hours. He hated to do that. Everyone else made the effort to come to him; he could at least do his part and remain conscious.

The second thing he registered was that his guest wasn't Angela, but Booth.

Oddly enough, the fact that his legs still hurt was a distant third.

"Fine," he told Booth. "Not that I don't appreciate the visit, but where's Angela?"

"Working on a facial reconstruction. We have a murder victim and no ID, so all the squints are busy but I'm not." Hodgins nodded. There was a phase in most FBI-Jeffersonian joint investigations where that happened. In the first years of collaboration, Booth had often stormed around the lab distracting them from their work because he was frustrated at having nothing to do. After a few children and a few promotions, Booth usually found a more productive use for his time.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Booth asked again. "That sounded like pain."

"Phantom pain," he admitted, since he didn't think Booth was likely to let it go.

"Do you want to talk to the doctor?"

"No. I pissed off everyone who works here this morning."

"Why?"

"They wouldn't stop talking about snow."

To his credit, Booth nodded as if that was a completely reasonable explanation for irritating the people who were responsible for his day-to-day comfort. Hodgins was pretty sure that suspects who insisted that their potentially murderous behavior had been completely justified got the same look from Booth.

"I'll just be charming when they come in, then," Booth decided. "They'll like me, even if they hate you."

That was more or less how it went. The doctor on call had heard about Hodgins' allegedly poor behavior, but did a quick examination and explained that the pain was definitely of the phantom variety. "You may walk again some day, if the fall and the hematoma didn't do permanent damage to the spinal cord," she confirmed. "But we don't know yet, and this isn't a sign."

Booth politely thanked her and shut the door behind her.

"Do you think she's right?" he asked.

"I said before you called her that it was phantom pain," Hodgins pointed out.

"Yeah, but…" The look of concern Booth was giving Hodgins now wasn't one that was shared with suspects or annoying medical professionals. Instead, it was a look friends only got from friends. "Sometimes doctors aren't right. They tell you something that you feel isn't there, and it is."

"Speaking from experience?" asked Hodgins.

Booth shrugged neutrally. "Maybe. I just hope that you trust your own judgment."

"For one thing, I do," Hodgins assured him. "They're telling me that I can't be out of here by Christmas. I think I can."

That made Booth smile. "Agreed. You can."

"Don't tell Angela I said that, though. I don't want to get her hopes up in case I'm wrong."

"I won't tell her," Booth promised. "But I don't think she'll be very surprised."

"Why not?"

"Angela didn't exactly put off getting ready for you to come home."

"What do you mean?"

"She bought a new van. One that'll handle a wheelchair. And the house… well, luckily your house didn't need much modification. All those wide doorways and walk-in showers, and not many stairs. We did almost everything ourselves."

"We?" asked Hodgins, his heart swelling at the casual confession. He and Angela had very, very good friends.

"Don't worry, Bray knows what he's doing. I'd let him remodel my whole house. I know what I'm doing, too. And Aubrey… well, we didn't let Aubrey do anything important but we had to let him think he was helping." Booth smirked. "Then we made him test drive the wheelchair."

Hodgins laughed at the image, and some of the tension that had been haunting him all day began to dissipate.

"The test drive went well. You should be able to get where you need to go," Booth concluded. He stood up and slapped Hodgins on the shoulder. "Even if it snows."

 **The End**


	4. Christmas Tree

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 4: Christmas Tree**

Angela had gotten at least half a dozen offers to help with the Christmas tree. There were offers to help her pick it out and drive it home. There were offers to cut and deliver it for her. There were even offers to decorate it for her, which was silly, because she was an artist and that was her favorite part.

She thanked everyone politely and declined. Instead, she strapped Michael Vincent into his carseat and drove to the Christmas tree farm, just the two of them.

At least, it was just the two of them until she handed the phone to her son and told him which button to push. "It's an important job," she reminded him. "Your father will only see what you show him with the camera."

Michael voiced his understanding enthusiastically. It wasn't as if any child of Angela's was likely to be a fearful technophobe.

They used this technology at work every time someone in the field needed an expert consult on bones or slime or weapons. It worked just as well now that she needed a consult from someone with a doctorate in botany to make certain that she picked out the perfect Christmas tree.

She watched and listened indulgently while Michael stood in the parking lot and spun in a circle so that his father could see the rows on rows of trees lined up for sale.

" _Just don't get the pink plastic one,"_ Hodgins said from inside the phone.

Angela's eyes lit up. She hadn't even noticed the pink plastic one.

It was very, very, pink.

And very plastic.

It would look great with a lot of silver ornaments- deliciously, deliberately tacky.

"How much?" she asked the salesman who had sauntered over to see if they were serious customers.

"Usually goes for three hundred," the salesman told her. "Two for this one since it's our display model. We sold out of these."

" _How_?" asked Hodgins.

"Ignore him," Angela told the salesman. She didn't feel bad about shutting Hodgins out of this particular purchase since she would have done it if he'd been there in person, too. "We'll take it."

"No!" objected Michael.

" _No_!" objected Hodgins.

"Yes," she told the salesman. She picked up the phone to make sure the Hodgins could see her rolling her eyes. "You'll get yours, too. Don't worry."

The only thing better than buying one tree with her son and husband was buying two trees. Or three; they could get a small tabletop tree in a pot, too, and plant it outside after the holidays.

Thus reassured, Hodgins resumed his lecture to Michael about how the needles of a pine tree grow in bunches, unlike the single needles of spruces and firs. " _And the needles on a spruce are the sharpest!"_ Hodgins warned as Michael reached for a blue spruce that Angela thought might be worth purchasing just for its scent. " _Be careful!"_

"That's the one I want," Michael decided. "The one with the sharp needles."

" _The spruces look healthier,"_ Hodgins opined. " _I think he's right. Spin the one four from the left around."_

The salesman was busy stowing the pink tree in the back of the van, so Angela did the spinning herself. The tree four from the left turned out to have a hole in the back, but the one behind it was deemed perfect by both Hodgins and Michael.

She let the salesman strap that one to the roof while they evaluated the small potted tabletop trees. " _Canadian Hemlock if you want the best chance of it living after you plant it outside,"_ Hodgins decreed, and they let Michael chose which one was going to be strapped into the van's passenger seat using the time honored-tradition of eeny-meeny-miny-moe.

It was, quite frankly, the quickest and easiest purchase of a Christmas tree (let alone three) Angela had ever experienced.

" _Are you sure you want three, Angie?"_ Hodgins asked after Michael Vincent had said goodbye and was back in his carseat.

She looked into the phone at her husband. She looked over her shoulder at her son. "Three is a good number," she told him meaningfully. "You know that. There won't ever be anything wrong with three."

Even if she still believed, in her heart of hearts, that next year her favorite number would be four or five.

 **The End**

 **Note:** _Hey, I managed to stay under 1000 words for once!_

 _Thank you WishfulThinking and Laura for the reviews._


	5. Angel

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 5: Angel**

The upside was that Hodgins suddenly had enough energy to be bored. His body and mind had recovered enough from the explosion that had left him paralyzed that he was now able to focus on things other than physical therapy and his daily visits from Angela.

The downside was that he was bored. He missed his microscope and his lab and the outside world.

As he became more and more mobile, he got into the habit of sneaking out of his room and exploring the far corners of the rehab facility. It was difficult to sneak around in a clumsy wheelchair, though, and his excursions were usually cut short by a well-meaning nurse or physical therapist ordering him to get back where he belonged.

Booth and Aubrey would not have been impressed by his secret agent skills. It was a good thing that he didn't plan on telling them what he'd been doing.

He was on one of his expeditions when he heard something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

 _Hot, blue and righteous,_

 _an angel called me aside._

 _Hot, blue and righteous,_

 _said, "Stick by me and I'll be your guide."_

Hodgins' father-in-law rarely announced his presence like a normal human being. He liked to lurk around corners and burst in unexpectedly. _He_ had decent secret agent skills.

He was definitely responsible for the music blaring from the kitchens where the patients' lunch was currently being prepared.

There was no way that a twenty-year-old kitchen worker just happened to be playing an obscure ZZ Top song from 1973.

Just then, one of those twenty-year-old workers popped out the door and noticed Hodgins' stricken expression. "Are you lost?" he asked, not unkindly. "I can help you get back to your room."

"I can get myself back. I just… noticed the music. Who chose that?"

"I did," the kid confirmed proudly. "I always liked that song. The idea of someone coming into your life like an angel, guiding you, helping you give yourself fully. You know?"

"Some people think the angel in that song is a .38 special," said Hodgins darkly. "That it's really a song about vengeance."

"That's messed up, man," the kid said, before catching himself and remembering that all the employees at the rehab center were not to imply that the inmates were in any way "messed up" on pain of termination. "Let's get you back where you need to be."

The kid ignored Hodgins' protestations and escorted him back to his room, where Hodgins pondered his imminent demise until visiting hours began.

Angela happened to have Booth and Brennan in tow. Under ordinary circumstances Hodgins would have been pleased to see them. Today he ignored them.

"Angie," he demanded frantically as soon as she was through the door, "have you told your father about this?" He gestured at the wheelchair in which he sat. He'd been too anxious to put himself back to bed.

"No," said Angela. She appeared to consider the implications of that. "I haven't _not_ told him, either. We haven't really talked. He's been off doing… the things he does."

"Do you think he'll be angry?"

"That I didn't tell him?"

"He thinks you didn't tell him because I asked you not to," Hodgins concluded. "You're his little girl. Nothing is ever your fault."

"My father talked to you?"

"No," said Hodgins. "But he was here."

"How do you know?"

"His music was playing down in the kitchen."

Angela dropped to the floor beside his chair and ran her hand roughly through his curly hair. "A lot of people play my father's music. He just finished a tour, and he's going out again in March."

Hodgins shook his head. "Meaning he has time to come here and punish me for letting you down."

"You haven't let me down," Angela coaxed.

"He won't see it that way. Remember that time we had a completely mutual breakup and he tattoed your face on my arm? Only topped by the time he tattooed me with his own face because I didn't want our son to have to go through life lying about his horrible ridiculous name the way you do. And that's what he did to me when I hypothetically could have run away!"

From the other side of the room, Booth snickered. "So it doesn't make that much difference that you _can't_ run now, right?"

Hodgins glared at Booth. Loyally, Angela glared too, but Hodgins could see that she was also trying not to laugh.

"Your father-in-law thinks the sun rises and sets on you. You don't get it," Hodgins accused.

"My father-in-law is a retired bank robber and former fugitive, and sometimes I have to stop him from murdering people," Booth argued. "And then there was that time he wouldn't let me arrest him unless he got to kick me in the nuts first."

" _Really_?" asked Angela with interest. Either she hadn't heard the story before or she had forgotten. "Was that some kind of 'don't ever hurt my daughter' thing?"

"I don't think so," said Booth. "Just a guy thing. Not going down without a fight. He was always pretty clear that I had his blessing to marry Bones."

"Not that you needed it," Brennan injected. "I love my father, but I don't need his blessing to do anything."

"Exactly," said Angela. "That whole tradition where a man asks a woman's father for her hand is disgusting. It's the kind of thing that puts you off of marriage altogether."

That was not a topic that Hodgins wanted to dwell on. "What does _Hot, Blue, and Righteous_ mean?" he asked Angela abruptly. "Is the angel guiding him a .38 special?"

"No," said Angela hastily. Then she appeared to ponder that for a moment. "I don't think so. It wouldn't have occurred to me to ask that."

"Angela's father's songs are usually fairly straightforward," Brennan added. "I think the angel is just an angel. Not that there's any such thing as angels, but there tends to be religious imagery in his music. _Jesus Just Left Chicago_?" She sat on the edge of Hodgins' bed, clearly believing that her point had been proven.

"So _Hot, Blue, and Righteous_ was the song you heard?" Angela asked. "That's weird. I've always liked it, but it's not exactly _La Grange._ "

"It _is_ weird!" said Hodgins, pleased that Angela was starting to take him seriously. "That's why I think he's lurking around here sending me signs."

"The security in this building is pretty good," said Booth. "It has to be, with all the politicians they treat here." He flashed a quick, baiting grin. "Did you get in any more fights with them about global warming?"

Hodgins didn't dignify that with a response, although he appreciated Brennan's commiserating glance. Science-deniers were a scourge.

"Where did you hear it, Jack?" Angela asked. At least his wife was sympathetic. "Was it here, near your room? Or over in the place where they do your P.T.?"

"No. It was down in the kitchen."

"What were you doing there?"

"Nothing."

"So the song played somewhere that no one could have expected you to be?" asked Booth. "Want me to go interrogate the kitchen staff and pull the visitors' log?"

The worst of it was that a part of Hodgins wanted Booth to do exactly that, but Booth had made the offer with more than a little boy-are-you-crazy in his tone. Booth was never going to properly appreciate the fact that at least Max made sure his victims died quickly and painlessly.

"Fine," said Hodgins. "You'll all be sorry if he comes after me with his very large gun collection when I can't move."

"The guards downstairs notice my gun every time. Most places really don't," said Booth.

"But they still let you in," Hodgins pointed out.

"Because I show them my badge," said Booth slowly and deliberately, as if speaking to an exceptionally dim child.

"They'd let us a bring a good microscope in, too, don't you think?" Brennan asked Booth. "With your badge? Even though they have all of those rules about what we aren't supposed to bring?"

"Probably. Why? He can't work yet."

"He can't take part in the criminal investigations, but there has to be something from the historical end or the pure research end that he can do." She looked at Hodgins now. "I know you don't like that as much, but do you want to?"

"You don't have to," said Angela quickly. "Getting better is a fulltime job."

"His body's broken. His brain isn't. He's a genius. He needs something to think about other than what your father is going to do when he finds out that you didn't tell him about this."

"I can think about both," Hodgins objected, and turned his attention back to Brennan. "Yes. Anything that's physically and legally feasible."

"You'll have it tomorrow or the next day," Brennan promised. "I'll push whoever I have to."

And so Hodgins' day turned out to be a good one, even if he could have sworn that he heard the distant strains of a guitar as he fell asleep that night.

 **The End**

 **Auxiliary Disclaimer:** _Hot, Blue, and Righteous is the property of ZZ Top, as are the other songs referenced. Just in case the real Billy Gibbons is as scary as the fictionalized Billy Gibbons, I wanted to be extra sure to say that I own nothing!_

 _Thank you for reading and reviewing!_


	6. Pie

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 6: Pie**

When Angela grabbed a sketchbook and a pencil, she intended to draw Wendell, Booth, and Aubrey as they fussed with grab bars and swing-away door hinges. She offered to help, but they insisted that she sit down and rest. She didn't even have Michael Vincent to entertain; Brennan had taken all of the children to daycare. When Brennan returned, she and Angela would be going to the car dealership to trade in Angela's van for a wheelchair-accessible model.

In the meantime, Angela had her sketchbook.

She'd drawn Wendell many times, and still submitted that Hodgins had over-reacted to the nude painting. She'd drawn Booth more than once, too; they had known each other for a very long time. Aubrey was the newest subject, and so she started by studying him.

Instead of Aubrey's quick smile and the youthful enthusiasm, though, Angela saw only fading bruises from the explosion that had left her husband paralyzed.

She quickly averted her gaze to Wendell and found herself evaluating how much older he looked now than he had when they'd been together. Several years had passed, she knew, but it was cancer rather than time that had worn extra lines into Wendell's face.

Watching Booth was no better. His steps were slow. He hunched his shoulders like an old man. Brennan had quietly confided that she wasn't certain that Booth was ever going to regain the ability to move the way he had before his own brush with death a few months before. At the time, Angela had pitied Brennan for her knowledge of kinesiology. It would be better, Angela had thought, not to notice that your husband was getting older because the two of you were together every day. One day you would simply wake up and realize that you had lived a long, wonderful life together.

That plan wasn't working out so well.

Instead of drawing her friends, she began to draw the pies that sat on the table and awaited the completion of the work. Pie was the best way to thank Booth; food of any sort was the best way to thank Aubrey.

Pie had, oddly enough, been the very first subject of her very first formal art class. It was useful for teaching perspective. ("You curve the bottom, and it creates the illusion of the third dimension.") At the end of the class, the teacher had distributed the pie to her young students and they went home to their parents blissfully happy.

Back then, she had drawn a lopsided apple on top of her pie.

Now, she drew the Greek letter pi engraved in the crust because she had spent years in the company of scientists who labored under the mistaken impression that that joke was funny every time.

She tried again to draw the men as they switched out the sink for one that would be more compatible with a wheelchair. She wanted to capture the intense concentration on Wendell's face.

Instead, her pencil drew Hodgins, lying under the sink and searching for evidence- as he had been when she'd first seen this house and told him that she pictured raising their family in a place like this.

He'd handed her the keys to the house within a week.

She drew the keys.

She drew Michael Vincent bracing himself against the door jamb as he learned to walk.

She drew Michael Vincent, older, playing on a swingset.

She drew herself and Hodgins, younger, playing on a different swingset.

She drew a wheelchair.

It looked as foreboding as it had looked outside Hodgins' hospital room moments after his diagnosis.

The pies and the keys and the swings that surrounded it didn't make it less so.

She started to tear up the sketch when a hand on her wrist stopped her. She startled; she hadn't realized that Brennan had returned.

"Don't," said Brennan quietly. "There's something special about it."

That gave Angela pause. What Brennan generally appreciated about art was an artist's ability to depict underlying bone structure correctly. "It's agony," said Angela. "I don't want it in my house."

"Give it to me," Brennan suggested. "Just for now. If you really want to destroy it, I'll give it back as soon as you ask."

It was such an uncharacteristically sentimental gesture that Angela couldn't say no. Wordlessly, she handed the sketch to Brennan, who deposited in her own car before climbing into Angela's van, ready for their depressing shopping trip.

"Maybe Booth will go out to your car, see it, realize it's a piece of junk, and throw it out," Angela mused.

Brennan shook her head. "He would never throw out pie just because it was next to a wheelchair."

Angela accepted that there was some wisdom in that, after all.

 **The End**

 **Note** : _I almost gave up the challenge when I saw today's prompt. Easy enough if you're writing Booth or even Aubrey. Not as easy for my pair. Besides, much like Brennan, I'm not all that impressed with pie. So I reached._


	7. Frost

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 7: Frost**

Hodgins was sitting up in bed looking at a laptop screen and glowing with happiness when Angela entered the room. Having work to do, even if it wasn't the crime-solving work that he liked best, agreed with him.

His smile only widened when he saw her. "Come up here, Ang," he said, putting the laptop aside and patting the bed next to him. She obeyed eagerly. Getting in the patient's bed was technically against the rehab center's rules. But having sex at work in storage areas was technically against the rules, too, and they'd certainly done _that_ often enough. There was no chance that they would be embarrassed if someone caught them this way.

"You smell good," he told her as he kissed her hello. "Like outside."

"You miss it?" she asked needlessly.

"So much."

"Very soon," she assured him. "The minute the doctors say it's okay. Maybe before."

His smile softened and became almost shy. "Booth told me that you redid the house and bought a new van."

A lance of displeasure ran through her. She wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if the remodeling had been any kind of secret. If Booth hadn't told Hodgins, then Aubrey or Wendell or Brennan or someone who hadn't even been there would have done it.

She had no idea why she hadn't done it herself.

"I wasn't supposed to know?" Hodgins asked, correctly reading her expression.

"I didn't want you to worry." As she said the words, she knew that they were true. "Or brood. Or anything bad. I only want good thoughts and good things for you."

"Knowing that I can go home is a good thought. A good early Christmas present." He kissed her again. "Speaking of early Christmas presents…" He reached under the sheets and Angela's annoyance dissipated in favor of anticipation.

Something hard brushed against her leg. "Is that my gift or are you just happy to see me?" She couldn't resist the joke even knowing that they weren't quite ready to discuss things like sex and babies and the way their new reality affected their life goals.

"Both. This is your gift and I am always very happy to see you."

"Did you have to hide it because it's stolen?" she asked eagerly.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

That was interesting. "It isn't jell-o from the dining room, is it?"

"There are lots of good uses for jell-o," he told her suggestively.

"Don't I know it."

"This, however, is not jell-o."

He removed a spray can with a flourish.

"Jack Frost Ice Crystals!" she exclaimed without taking the time to read the package. "They stopped making these."

"And you liked them better than all the other fake frost window decorations."

She didn't even bother to use the other brands. None of them appealed to her artistic sensibilities, and there were uncountable ways to decorate that did not necessitate fake frost.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she exclaimed. "Did they just have a case sitting in the basement or something?"

"Probably." He watched her twirl the can around her fingers. "Text me a picture when you get done using it."

* * *

She did him one better than texting him a picture. She logged him into a videoconference and kept up a steady stream of chatter as she added frosty decorations that wouldn't annoy Cam too much to the lab windows and mirrors.

She got to Brennan's office last and drew the obvious, but necessary, skeleton wearing a Santa hat on the biggest piece of glass. When Booth and Brennan arrived together, she quickly ended the conversation with her husband and stowed her phone in her pocket.

"I like him," said Booth as he evaluated the frost drawing.

"Shape of the pelvis indicates that he's a she," Brennan corrected automatically.

"You told Hodgins about the remodeling and the new van," Angela accused Booth, ignoring any commentary on her work.

"I wasn't supposed to?" he asked, and that was a fair question.

"I just don't want him to worry."

"He might worry more if he wasn't sure that he had a home that he could physically get to," Booth pointed out, kindly enough that Angela didn't want to turn the spray can on his face.

"He has a home and he's coming home for Christmas if I have to break him out of that overpriced world class rehab place," Angela said firmly. "But don't tell him I said that in case something happens to make it into a promise I can't keep."

They agreed, and that was enough even if Angela didn't entirely like the way Booth smiled at her as if he knew something that she didn't.

* * *

"Why were you smiling at Angela?" Brennan demanded when she and Booth were alone.

"I always smile at Angela."

"That is factually untrue, and also irrelevant. I asked why on this particular occasion you reacted to Angela the way you usually react to witnesses who have just told you something that you need to solve a case."

Booth whistled. "And they say you're bad at reading people."

"Bad at people," she agreed without concern. "Good at you."

"It has to stay between us if I tell you."

"Fine."

"You can't tell Angela even though she's your best friend."

"If you say that what you're about to tell me can't hurt Angela, then I trust you."

"All right." Booth pulled Brennan into her office and closed the door behind them. "Angela doesn't want Hodgins to know that he's coming home for Christmas even if she has to break him out."

"She just said that."

"What Hodgins told me a few days ago was that he doesn't want Angela to know that he's coming home for Christmas even if he has to sneak out. They're exactly on the same page. It's very _Gift of the Magi._ "

"Except they want to give each other the same gift so the gifts don't cancel each other out."

"They're trying to protect each other. It's nice."

"It is." Brennan looped her arm through Booth's and leaned against him. "They're both right. Especially because of Michael Vincent. Parents should be home with their children on Christmas morning."

There was a faraway look in her eyes. For a brief moment, she wasn't thinking of Michael Vincent, or even of Christine and Hank.

"They will be," Booth said. "They will be."

"Of course they will be." She drove the memories out of her mind. "They will."

 **The End**


	8. Gingerbread

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 8: Gingerbread**

On Christmas Eve morning, the rehab center served gingerbread men with breakfast. Despite the jokes Hodgins and Angela made about the menu consisting primarily of jell-o, the institutional food was actually very good. Hodgins made a point of setting aside his gingerbread man for Michael Vincent's visit later that day. When he explained his reasoning to the staff, half a dozen more gingerbread men appeared on his windowsill, wrapped in pretty red cellophane.

Michael Vincent bounded through life operating under the assumption that everyone would love him, and his assumptions were usually proven correct. Everyone in the rehab center certainly adored him, and the family therapist had nodded her approval when she'd first seen Michael sitting on Hodgins' lap and asking how the wheelchair worked.

"I hate to say it, but it breaks down on gender lines almost every time," the woman quietly told Hodgins later. "Little girls want to know what happened to put someone in a wheelchair. Little boys just want to know whether the chair can pop a wheelie."

More important than wheelies was whether the chair could conceal the laptop and the microscope that had migrated to Hodgins' room during his stay at the facility when he snuck out the door without permission.

The staff wasn't going to release him for Christmas.

He would have stayed put despite the day on the calendar if he'd been given a good reason- something like exposure to Valley Fever necessitating quarantine. He'd been there and done that.

But as far as he could tell there was no reason at all beyond a vague "we'd like to keep you under observation a little bit longer."

That wasn't good enough.

It was even worse when they said that they couldn't do the paperwork required for him to leave against his physician's advice until the next week. Obviously that defeated the purpose.

And sneaking out wasn't as easy as walking, or rolling, out the door. Security was tight because some of Hodgins' fellow patients were politically connected. There was at least one congressman and at least one ambassador. And so there were guards who not only kept unwanted visitors out but kept unruly patients in.

He wasn't a genius for nothing, though. If Zack Addy could periodically get himself out of a hospital for the criminally insane, Jack Hodgins could certainly get himself out of a fashionably showy rehab center.

* * *

Michael Vincent was delighted with the gingerbread men despite having spent the past month being plied with cookies and candy at every turn.

"You remember the story of the gingerbread man?" Hodgins asked him, finding the tale more than a little on point. "The old woman baked a gingerbread man, and he ran out of her oven because he didn't want her to eat him."

"And he said, 'Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!'" Michael completed obligingly as he clambered onto his father's lap.

Angela stepped out of the room halfway through the story, and Hodgins watched her with worried eyes. She returned with a tight, forced look on her face just as the fox was devouring the gingerbread man, who after all was meant to be eaten.

"Are you okay to escort us out to the van?" Angela asked.

"We aren't leaving yet!" Michael shrieked his objection. "We've only been here… fifteen minutes." He pointed proudly at the clock on the wall. Telling time on analog clocks was a fairly new accomplishment for him.

Angela dropped to her knees beside Hodgins' chair and addressed Michael Vincent in her most serious tones. "That's right. And I want you to keep yelling about it."

"Angie…" Hodgins' heart pounded in his chest. He suspected that he knew where this was going even though they'd never discussed it. As overwhelmed as he was at the thought, he wasn't positive that he was on board with using Michael as a diversion.

"It'll be fine," said Angela. "Do you need a few minutes to get ready?"

A few more minutes sounded like torture. "I'm ready," he said.

She arranged Michael Vincent so that he was pressed against Hodgins' chest. "You need to hang on tight, okay?"

"Okay."

She high-fived both Hodgins and Michael; Hodgins and Michael high-fived each other because it seemed like the thing to do.

"No matter what I say, no matter what happens, keep screaming until we high-five again," Angela instructed Michael.

"But what do I scream?" asked Michael, who hadn't been at a loss an instant before when he'd looked to be on the verge of a genuine tantrum.

"Anything. You don't need to yell words, just yell."

Michael looked doubtful.

"Can you say 'I hate you and you ruined Christmas?'" Hodgins suggested.

Michael nodded.

"Go ahead," Angela prompted.

"I hate you," said Michael. "And you ruined Christmas."

"Yell," Hodgins whispered in his son's ear. "Scream."

It was remarkable that it had required this much prompting. Michael wasn't now, and had never been, an especially quiet child.

" _I hate you!"_ yelled Michael. His shriek bounced off the wall's the way only a six-year-old's shriek could. " _You ruined Christmas."_

" _That's it!"_ snapped Angela. " _We're leaving!"_ And she gave Hodgins' chair a hard shove from behind.

It might have been better for Hodgins' ego to push the chair himself, but his hands were busy holding onto Michael Vincent, who was suddenly too engaged in his acting debut to have any recollection of the instruction to hang on tight.

" _I hate you and I hate everybody!"_

"Good."

" _And I hate Christmas and I hate gingerbread men."_

"Patients aren't allowed past this point," one of the guards gamely attempted as they reached the front door.

"It's the only way we can get our son out of here," Angela said frantically. "He'll be back once we get Michael Vincent into the car."

" _Not getting in the car!"_ Michael Vincent moaned so piteously that Hodgins had to swallow a laugh and wonder if he would ever be able to take his son seriously the next time he was genuinely angry.

Angela hit a button to make the van unlock itself and a wheelchair ramp unfold before they were halfway across the parking lot.

It wasn't until they were safely in the van with the doors locked that she reached behind her seat to offer Michael Vincent a high-five.

Michael quieted immediately, and resumed eating his way through the army of gingerbread men.

Hodgins found himself holding his breath until Angela pulled onto the Beltway. He exhaled with a laugh.

"They couldn't really hold me against my will," he said as he adjusted to the odd sensation of being anywhere other than the rehab center. "We could have just left and told the guard what to do with himself."

"Probably," said Angela. "But this was more fun."

 **The End.**

 _Happy 2016! Thank you for the reviews… or the attempted reviews, if FF.N is still in a review-hiding snit._


	9. Presents

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 9: Presents**

Angela had always been firm in her conviction that the best Christmas gifts were made, not purchased. She cared more about creating decorations for the tree than she cared about anything under the tree that might have her name attached.

She had been even more adamant that the truly important thing about Christmas was time with the people who meant the most to her. During the course of her childhood, time alone with her father had been rare and precious but he had never failed to make sure that their annual exchange of gifts had been private and unrushed. The treasure had been her father's presence, not his presents.

Naturally, she had wanted to pass these values along to her son. She had no desire to raise a spoiled child who had so many material possessions that he appreciated of none of them.

That was why Hodgins was stunned to come home for the first time after weeks in the hospital to see the stacks upon stacks of wrapped boxes under the tree in the living room. He couldn't even see the bicycle and the roller skates that they had long ago agreed would be Michael Vincent's major presents for the year.

Michael Vincent followed his gaze. "Look at all the presents!" he exclaimed. "And Santa hasn't even come yet!"

"One year of this isn't going to turn him into that affluenza kid from Texas," Angela whispered in Hodgins' ear.

It wasn't the time or place to argue, and Hodgins let Michael Vincent give him a tour of the house, pointing out each newly widened doorway and newly hung piece of first grade artwork.

When he and Angela were alone in their bedroom, though, Hodgins promptly rolled himself to the closet and wrenched it open to find the bike, the rollerskates, and a few more modest presents: two DVDs, a new jacket, and a set of paints. This alone was more in keeping with what they usually gave Michael Vincent for Christmas.

"Angie," he said quietly, more concerned at her change of heart than angry that she had left him out of the loop.

It was, nonetheless, her undoing. "He's been _so good_ ," she defended, even though he hadn't accused her of anything. "He hasn't given his teacher any trouble, or anyone at daycare, or Booth and Brennan. He never complains when I change his schedule at the last minute. He tries to do everything I ask him to do. He asked when you were coming home every day, but when I said I didn't know he never argued about it. I thought we'd get you here for Christmas. I hoped we would, but I couldn't guarantee it, and I know that a million presents don't make up for maybe not having his father home, but I… couldn't resist," she completely anticlimactically. "It's so easy now, too, you know? You push a button and it shows up wrapped on your doorstep two days later."

"Angie," he repeated, and it sucked like nothing had ever sucked before that he couldn't stand up and take her in his arms. "Come over here."

"If you touch me now, I'll start crying," she declared, staying put. "I'm not going to cry to make you not be mad at me."

"How could I possibly be mad at you right now?"

"I know I should have told you."

"You're telling me now. What's in all of the boxes downstairs?"

"Some of them are clothes and books," she said, as if she were still defending herself. "Art supplies. Action figures. That science kit we talked about last month. Legos. Video games. Card games. Chocolate. This teddy bear that was so cute I'm keeping it if he doesn't want it. A set of walkie-talkies and a little mp3 player."

"I don't think any of that is going to turn him into an entitled sociopath," Hodgins conceded wryly. "You're right. Let's just enjoy this one. We can go back to doing things in moderation next year."

She nodded in agreement, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she almost wished he would have argued with her, on Christmas Eve, on his first night home from the hospital.

But if they had argued, it still would have been better than the years he had spent Christmas escaping to Canada in the company of a masseuse, using the snow drifts as an excuse to keep from interacting with any other living being.

"The only thing I wanted for Christmas was to be here with you," he told her. "Everything else is just details."

"That's all I wanted, too." Angela met his eyes for the first time in what seemed like forever, but had probably been about fifteen minutes. "Which is why I'm afraid of screwing up the details."

"You couldn't," he told her, but she still wouldn't let him touch her.

"You should be resting," she said instead. "Today has been way more excitement than your body is used to, and you want to be ready to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow."

She wasn't wrong. He could feel his adrenaline rush receding after the thrill of leaving the rehab facility and coming home. He wasn't going to have the energy to stay up late enough to help Angela put the bike under the tree, which was just as well, since he wasn't going to be running alongside Michael Vincent as he first rode it.

He slept straight through the night and didn't hear Angela when she got into bed after disposing of the milk and cookies left for Santa Claus.

When he awoke the next morning, he wasn't entirely sure that Angela was there until he turned himself around to see her. She hadn't spooned close to him the way he'd dreamed that she would during the long nights in rehab. He didn't know whether she was afraid of hurting him, or whether she felt repulsed by him, or whether she had just been tired and hadn't even thought about it when she collapsed into bed next to him.

It wasn't until he pulled himself upright, thinking that he didn't have long until Michael Vincent charged into the bedroom, that he noticed a bright red envelope sitting next to his wheelchair. He had to squint to read it.

 _Jack_

 _For Your Eyes Only!_

That was interesting.

He tore it open. Inside was a photograph of Angela, clearly a self portrait.

She wore an elf hat and nothing else.

 _Merry Christmas_ , she'd written on the back. _In-person performance to follow at a time of your choosing._

 **The End**

 _Thank you for the reviews. I can read them, but FF.N isn't up for letting me use the PM feature to respond personally. That does not make them any less appreciated!_


	10. Cookies

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 10: Cookies**

A few hours had passed since the carnage that could result only from over-indulging a six-year-old on Christmas morning when Angela's phone lit up with a message from Brennan.

 _How do you feel about Wong Fu's for Christmas dinner?_

 _It wouldn't be the first time,_ Angela replied before handing her phone to Hodgins so that he could read the message, too.

"This is going to be interesting," Hodgins said. "Are they coming here, or are we going there?"

"They're coming here," Angela confirmed. The original plan had been to let Booth and Brennan host, as they usually did on this kind of occasion. However, Hodgins had only been home for one day and Angela had determined that it was too early to present his newfound freedom with the challenges inherent in visiting Booth and Brennan's glass house in the woods. Brennan had offered to move the party to Angela's house rather than cancel.

Angela wasn't inclined to tell Hodgins any of this, even though she knew that he was quite capable of figuring it out on his own. He wasn't a genius for nothing.

"Who's coming?" he asked, rather than questioning the location of the festivities.

"Just Booth and Brennan and the kids. And Max." Hodgins smiled at that, and Angela smiled back. It was always good to bring a conman to a potentially awkward family dinner so he could charm all of the participants. "And my father," she added.

Hodgins' eyes widened.

"He was here last night when I put out Michael Vincent's presents from Santa," Angela whispered, although she didn't need to. Michael Vincent did not glance up from his new set of action figures, who appeared to be preparing to do battle with a stuffed dragon. "If he didn't kill you in your sleep, he's not going to kill you."

"I'm not afraid that your father is going to kill me," said Hodgins unconvincingly. "No one else from the Jeffersonian is coming?"

"Everyone else has plans. I'm not saying that they're _good_ plans, but plans."

"Who has bad plans?" asked Hodgins, and she was pleased that he wasn't dwelling on either her father or his unofficial confinement to their home.

"Cam and Michelle regretted agreeing to the cruise with the extended family the minute they did it, but they had no way of backing out. I can't _wait_ to hear the story that comes out of that one. And Aubrey has decided to be romantic."

"Why is that a bad plan?"

"With Jessica _and_ with Leslie Green."

"Good luck with that."

"I know, right? He swears it was an accident."

* * *

"I swear it was an accident," was the first thing Max said when he arrived carrying an armload of grease-stained paper bags from Wong Fu's. "Did Tempe tell you it was on purpose?"

"She didn't tell us anything," said Angela, as she tried to avoid tripping over Christine, who was racing toward Michael Vincent and his new toys. Baby Hank squirmed in Brennan's arms, wanting to get down and play, too.

"I thought it went without saying that we never have Wong Fu's on Christmas on purpose," said Brennan.

" _That_ was definitely your fault," Booth told Brennan a little too quickly.

"I don't know what that means," said Max, borrowing one of his daughter's favorite phrases.

"Apparently this is something that happens to us every ten years," Angela explained. She directed the placement of takeout containers on the formally set table, and admired the happy incongruity of white cartons next to crystal goblets.

"They got themselves quarantined in their lab for Christmas ten years ago," Billy explained to Max. "We had to come visit them through the windows."

"Exposure to Valley Fever," Brennan told her father.

"Because she ordered her people to cut into the body when they should have been at the Christmas party," said Booth.

"Because you _brought_ her the body during the Christmas party," Angela objected. "You know that's like waving red meat in front of a pitbull. Especially since she was trying to get out of going to the party anyway."

"So they delivered takeout Chinese to us while we were stuck in there," said Hodgins, and everyone let him get away with failing to volunteer that he was the one who hadn't worn a mask and had introduced the contaminants into the lab's air supply in the first place.

"Which brings us back to, why are we eating Chinese today?" Angela asked her guests.

"That's an excellent question, Angela," said Brennan. "There was a complete, organic, nutritionally balanced meal in our refrigerator waiting to be prepared today. Everything was perfectly fine last night when Booth took Christine to Midnight Mass."

"Tempe and I were making sure that… everything was going to be ready for this morning. I went outside to make sure that the lights were on so that Santa would be able to see the house," Max continued.

"He went outside and saw that the house down the road had a star on it that was higher than the star over our door," Brennan elaborated.

"Your house is far enough back from the next house that you can't even see them both at the same time unless you're really trying," said Angela.

"You would think that would be relevant," said Brennan.

"No, you, wouldn't," said Billy. "Go on."

"I only had to move the star a little to put it on the roof instead of where it was," said Max. "I was defending my family's honor. We went back to assembling that pink Disney princess castle thing, and everything was fine."

"Until Booth was driving home in the middle of the night and noticed the neighbors up on their roof."

"They'd gotten out a pole, and put it on their roof. The only reason that they did it was to make sure that their star was higher," said Max. "In the early hours of Christmas morning. It was not in the proper spirit of the season."

"And more importantly, it wasn't as high as that tree near our front door," said Booth. "The only problem was that we couldn't really plug it in unless we ran the extension cord around the side of the house from the kitchen."

"Which blew a fuse," said Brennan. "Which might not have been a problem if they hadn't accidentally propped the refrigerator door open, or if alternatively they had noticed the blown fuse sometime before this morning."

"You didn't have to throw out _everything_ in the fridge, Tempe," Max scolded. "Not all of it was spoiled."

"But we like Chinese food better than turkey!" Christine piped up as she tore back into the room and took her seat.

"Chinese food comes with fortune cookies," added Michael Vincent, as if that settled the matter.

* * *

At the end of the meal, they read out their fortunes. Michael Vincent was quite disappointed when his advised him that "Good clothes open many doors. Go shopping." Angela personally thought that that was excellent advice.

She couldn't disagree with her own fortune, either. "Great acts of kindness will befall you in the coming months," she read. She didn't doubt it. The past month had been terrible, but her family had benefitted from acts of kindness great and small.

"The limit to your abilities is where you place it," Hodgins read.

Angela wondered for a moment whether Sid couldn't magically assign the correct cookie to the correct person as well as the correct meal. It turned out that she wasn't the only one.

"It's true, you know," she heard her father murmur quietly to Hodgins as the party broke up. "What you got in your fortune. Things might be trickier now, but you can still get anything done if you put your mind to it. It's especially true since you've got my daughter's love behind you."

"Thank you, Sir," said Hodgins.

"See, Angie?" said Billy cheerfully when he noticed that his daughter had been listening in. "I'm an excellent father-in-law. Didn't get anybody to climb trees and blow fuses in the middle of the night or anything."

She supposed that that was a fair point.

 **The End**


	11. Carols

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 11: Carols**

The calendar still read December 25, but for all practical purposes the holiday was over. All of Angela's goals had been achieved. Her husband was home; her son had contentedly torn into his presents without concern over the upheaval of the past month; they had had dinner with their family and friends. She mentally moved past the holiday as soon as she tucked Michael Vincent into bed for the night.

There was a certain element of surprise, then, when she entered her own bedroom and saw the glow of the pink tree she had placed in the corner. Christmas carols played softly in the background.

 _Good King Wenceslas looked out_

 _On the feast of Stephen_

 _When the snow lay round about_

 _Deep and crisp and even_

 _Brightly shone the moon that night_

 _Though the frost was cruel_

 _When a poor man came in sight_

 _Gath'ring winter fuel_

It had always struck her as odd that choruses usually sang only the first verse of the song. That made it sound as though King Wenceslas had simply stood there and watched the poor man struggle through the snow, which surely would not have made him a particularly good king.

 _"Hither, page, and stand by me_

 _If thou know'st it, telling_

 _Yonder peasant, who is he?_

 _Where and what his dwelling?"_

 _"Sire, he lives a good league hence_

 _Underneath the mountain_

 _Right against the forest fence_

 _By Saint Agnes' fountain."_

She changed into a nightgown and combed her hair before turning with some trepidation to her bed. It wouldn't be their first night together since the accident, but the previous night hardly counted. She stayed up late making sure that Michael Vincent's presents were ready for the morning and talking to her father. Morning had come quickly, as Christmas morning tended to do in the home of a small child.

 _"Bring me flesh and bring me wine_

 _Bring me pine logs hither_

 _Thou and I will see him dine_

 _When we bear him thither."_

 _Page and monarch forth they went_

 _Forth they went together_

 _Through the rude wind's wild lament_

 _And the bitter weather._

She couldn't tell whether Jack was asleep. He ought to be; it had been a long day, and his doctors had pointedly implied that he might not get enough rest at home when she'd asked about ending his stay in the hospital early.

They'd achieved their goal. He'd come home for Christmas.

Now what?

 _"Sire, the night is darker now_

 _And the wind blows stronger_

 _Fails my heart, I know not how,_

 _I can go no longer."_

 _"Mark my footsteps, my good page_

 _Tread thou in them boldly_

 _Thou shalt find the winter's rage_

 _Freeze thy blood less coldly."_

Tears sprang to her eyes.

She was not a crier. She had never been a crier.

There had been one small exception. She had cried about everything, including Shamwow ads, when she'd been pregnant, but pregnancy was different.

She definitely wasn't pregnant and might never be pregnant again. So there was no excuse for weeping over a (probably) fictional page who feared that he couldn't take one more step through the storm he had entered to come to the aid of a stranger.

 _In his master's steps he trod_

 _Where the snow lay dinted_

 _Heat was in the very sod_

 _Which the Saint had printed_

 _Therefore, Christian men, be sure_

 _Wealth or rank possessing_

 _Ye who now will bless the poor_

 _Shall yourselves find blessing._

There. A happy ending. Everything had worked out thanks to King Wenceslas' riches and magical heated footsteps and general decency.

She turned off the music and the lights on the tree before sliding into her side of the bed, careful not to disturb her husband.

"Angie."

He hadn't been asleep, then. Close to him in the darkness, she could see that his eyes were open. He'd been watching her for quite some time, probably since she'd entered the room.

"Go to sleep," she told him. "You need to rest. It's good for healing."

His hand brushed her shoulder and she shivered. She had craved his touch during the long weeks that he had spent at the hospital and the rehab center. She had relished every kiss and treasured the stolen moments when she'd contrived to sit or lie next to him.

But in the privacy of their own home, most especially in the privacy of their own bedroom, his touch threatened to melt her. She couldn't afford to melt. She had a family and a life to hold together.

He reached for her again, more firmly this time, and tugged her toward him.

"What are you doing?" she asked stupidly.

"Let me hold you. Please."

The _please_ broke her.

She couldn't have said no even if she'd wanted to.

Not that she wanted to. She wanted Hodgins' arms around her. She'd wanted little else for the past month. She loved him. She missed him. She was afraid of losing him.

Obediently, she scooted across the bed and spooned herself against him, pressing her back to his chest. Her whole body shook when her legs brushed against his. His legs still felt as they always had to her, but she knew that he couldn't feel her legs in turn. Sooner rather than later, the muscle tone in his lower body would be lost. She might not remember how it had felt. Or she might remember too well, and that might be worse.

His arms tightened around her and a sob rose in her chest.

"If I cry, it's not your fault, okay?" she assured him. "That song made me cry. Not you."

"Maybe you just need to cry," he told her, his voice still tea-and-honey no matter the state of his body. "When was the last time you did?"

"When they told me your diagnosis. Before I came in to see you."

"That was a long time ago."

"A long time ago. A short time ago. Thanksgiving was yesterday, Christmas was six months ago. Time doesn't make any sense."

He kissed her hair, but didn't say anything more. Somehow being granted permission to cry in his arms removed the need. She felt her breathing slow down and her body cleaving more naturally to his.

"I love you," he said when she was almost too comfortable to return the sentiment.

Almost.

"I love you, too."

 **The End**

 _Again, thank you for the reviews. I would reply personally if I could!_


	12. Christmas Movies

**Home for Christmas**

 **Disclaimer** : _I don't own Bones. I make no profit._

 **Day 12: Christmas Movies**

Hodgins rolled close to the ridiculous (but endearing) fluorescent pink tree that stood proudly in the corner of his bedroom and lowered himself from the chair to the floor. It was a maneuver he had perfected some time ago, but not one that he was ever going to like.

Hopefully, he wouldn't have forever to learn to like it.

Hopefully, by next Christmas the chair would be a thing of the past and he would be back on his feet.

But sometimes the worst happened, and he knew that he had to be prepared for that.

"We're putting all of the Christmas decorations away today, and don't think you're getting out of helping just because you didn't have to put any of them up," Angela sang out as she swept into the room.

"My pleasure," he told her, and he meant it. He had hated missing the little day-to-day things just as much as he'd hated missing the big things when he'd been in the hospital. "But sit here with me for a minute. We didn't sit under a Christmas tree together all year."

She dropped easily to the floor beside him, and he took a moment to appreciate her casual touches and invasion of his space. She'd been a bit hesitant to touch him, at first, when he'd returned home. She had said all the right things, but she had had trouble making her actions match her words. He suspected that she was afraid of hurting him, and he couldn't fault her for that.

He didn't want to hurt her, either.

That was why they were going to have one last conversation before they packed Christmas away and hoped that it would be better next year.

"Is sitting under a Christmas tree together something we've done every year?" she asked as she let her fingers dance up and down his arm. He caught her hand in his.

"No. I don't think so. I just wanted to."

"Good enough." She leaned against him. "Is there anything else that we missed this year that you wanted to do? Food you didn't eat? A song you didn't hear? A movie you didn't watch?"

"I don't think I saw any Christmas movies," he mused. It didn't seem like a great loss, but it did seem odd that it hadn't occurred to him. "Maybe we can watch _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ while we undecorate the trees. Maybe we can stop at the part where he's about to dump the sleigh off of Mount Crumpet and pretend the story has a happy ending."

She laughed and swatted him playfully with their joined hands. "Christmas was that bad that you're rooting for the Grinch now?"

"No," he said quietly. "Christmas was wonderful, and don't think that I didn't notice and appreciate everything you did, Angie."

"I didn't do anything. You did the hard part. You're still doing the hard part." Angela sighed. "I know what you mean, though. It's why I'm so excited to start putting things away. It means that the month where this happened is over."

"That's why I wanted to talk to you. Here. While we're still in this place. So we can move on."

She twisted to look at him. "Sounds serious."

"It is."

She squared her shoulders almost imperceptibly and he was hit with a rush of love for her. "About having a baby the old-fashioned way," he prefaced. "I apologize for how unromantic and scientific this sounds. Because of the LCA gene, we were better off looking at in-vitro fertilization anyway so that we could minimize the risk. It would still be there, but it would be a lot less than one in four."

"We do not have to worry about this now," she said hastily.

"Yes, we do. If _this_ ," and he glared at the chair, "is permanent, my sperm count is going to fall. I know it seems like bad timing, but there's never really a good time for something like this. So if you still want another baby with me, we should get started as soon as we have a doctor who says it's okay to do electrostimulation or whatever they need to do to me."

She moved so that she was almost straddling him, and he tried not to give into the resentment that he couldn't much feel it. Then she grabbed his face with both of her hands, and he couldn't focus on anything but her eyes.

"Listen to me very clearly," she said. "I will always want another baby with you. Any baby that I ever have will be yours. But I am not going to allow anyone to do any kind of invasive procedure on you a few weeks after someone basically blew you up."

"I don't think a doctor will agree to it, either. But as soon as they let us, Angela. As soon as they let us. I know it will be harder on you being pregnant under the circumstances, but we can hire help if we need it. It's not like money is an issue. You aren't going to miss any opportunities because of this."

"The only opportunity I care about is the opportunity to spend the rest of my life with you."

He kissed her. "I love you, too. And I hope this isn't permanent. God, I hope this isn't permanent."

"So do I. But mostly I know that wheelchair or no wheelchair, we're fine. Baby or no baby, we're fine. You have been amazing this past month. It scared the hell out of me when you were so quiet at first because… well, you don't do quiet."

"As many times as you've wished I would."

She kissed him. "Don't joke. Not about this."

"Mind over matter, baby. I know that when life deals you a shitty hand, you can make yourself and everyone around you miserable or you can work with what you have left. Some days it's a lot harder than others."

"And you want to bring a new baby into our lives on top of that."

"I told you before our little detour to hell. I want to experience everything in life with you. All right, maybe I could have done without experiencing paralysis. But yes, another baby. I'm not going to take that from you. Or from me. Or from Michael."

"I don't want you to worry about taking things from me."

"I don't want you to act like I'm made of glass and what you need doesn't matter. Like when you didn't want to touch me because you didn't want to cry."

She slipped off of his hips and sat beside him again. "I was that transparent, huh?"

"Only to me."

"Then I'll tell you this instead of letting you see it without my help. I'm worried that your attitude is _too_ good. I'm not sure you've dealt with everything."

That amused him more than he wanted to show. It flattered him, too. "Has anyone ever really dealt with _everything_? I mean, Brennan has two kids and if she waited until she'd dealt with _everything_ she has going on-"

She shoved him hard enough that it surprised him; no one used force with the guy in a wheelchair. "That's my best friend that you're talking about."

"She wouldn't mind. She'd say I was using evidence to support my point."

"She probably would," Angela admitted. "But this is one of those times that science needs to step aside and listen to the rest of us. There are more important things. Like love."

"More kids, more love. Isn't that what you said, like, a month ago?"

"Why are you pushing this, Hodgins?" she asked firmly.

"I'm not pushing. If you say that our family is complete the way it is, or that you aren't sure about having another baby with me-"

She snapped her fingers. "And there it is."

"There what is?"

"You always worry about me leaving you for some guy I jumped over a broomstick with or whatever. We don't need a fix-it baby. There's nothing to be fixed."

He felt a dizzying rush of blood to his head. He had genuinely intended to raise the issue of babies and nothing else. "Sex?" he asked bluntly.

"Has more to do with your brain than any part of your body. I don't know how you're doing with getting an erection-"

"I can, but I can't feel it," he admitted.

"But the person I loved most in the romantic way in my life other than you was a woman."

He made a face. It wasn't that he hadn't liked Roxie, but he would just as soon not dwell on his wife's assorted exes.

"Fine," said Angela. "To get to the point of that, you're very good at oral, and if I haven't told you that enough I should have. I expect you to continue being my husband in that manner."

"You've got it," he smiled.

"And if this is temporary, and I hope it is, we will use this time to explore things that are fun for you even if you can't feel much below your waist." She jumped up and locked the door. "We can explore them now, if you like."

"I thought that you wanted to get the Christmas decorations put away," he teased her.

"That can wait until this afternoon," she whispered in his ear. "I'm flexible. Very, very flexible."

 **The End.**

 **Note** : _That's it for the 12 days of Christmas challenge. It was definitely challenging. The day after Christmas, the day of my friend's New Year's party, the day I drove 6 hours in the snow, the day I went back to work, a couple of prompts that didn't prompt me… In fact, I don't think I need to be challenged any more in the immediate future. I'm so impressed with everyone who managed to complete this with more than an hour to spare._

 _And also, FF.N is in the mood to let me PM again so you can expect thank you notes of appreciation for the reviews._

 _But thank you right here, anyway, for reading! Hope you enjoyed and hope your 2016 is off to a wonderful start._


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